Faceprinted

A creepy footnote to the shooting in Maryland yesterday. Apparently, the identity of the shooter – who had no ID on him, refused to give his name and had “obscured” his fingerprints – was determined via the use of facial recognition software.

An NBC news story about the incident mentions this fairly casually and without comment:

“Senior law enforcement sources briefed on the investigation told NBC News that Ramos had been identified through the use of facial recognition software. The sources said earlier that he had somehow obscured his fingerprints, making identification difficult. (Anne Arundel County Deputy Police Chief Bill) Krampf would not confirm those details, and said Thursday evening that he had no knowledge of any facial recognition or anything about fingerprints.”

Italics added.

If, in fact, the shooter was identified via his “faceprint” – so to speak – it shows just how powerful this “tool” is.

It is also implies pretty strongly that our faceprints are also in the system and the implication of that is troubling. We are probably not only being watched but individually recorded – our comings and goings – whenever we’re out and about. The cameras which are ubiquitous in most areas probably work like those Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) which can scan and “process” the license plates of every vehicle that passes within range of the reader.

Some people may not object, of course. If you have nothing to hide . . . .

In which case, why object to random spot checks of our homes by government goons? If you’ve got nothing to hide . . . .

Is it exaggerating things to suggest that all of this keeping track of us is like being made to wear an ankle bracelet which we can’t see or feel but which serves the same purpose? And without the conviction?

You don’t have to wear an ankle bracelet unless you’ve been found guilty of some criminal act first. Then – as an alternative to being placed in a government cage, they let you go home and use your home as the cage, with some limited free roaming occasionally permitted.

But the point is, they know where you are.

Faceprints take it a step farther. They know who you are as well as where you are (and where you have been). With the terabytes of storage capacity known to exist, it is possible – probable – they have the technological means to record and store the daily routines of 300-plus million people, or at least whatever percentage of the population has been faceprinted and lives in or travels through a camera-rich environment.

Not that anyone cares about such things anymore, but the civil liberties issues raised by all of this are important. Where and when did the government acquire the legal authority to monitor and record us without warrant and in the absence of any probable cause a crime has been committed? Does not faceprinting render moot the laws still on the books limiting when armed government workers (i.e., law enforcement) may lawfully demand that a person identify themselves?

In general, the law is that the armed government worker has to be able to articulate reasonable suspicion that a crime either has been committed (and by the specific individual he is seeking to ID) or is about to be committed. Most states also require that anyone operating a motor vehicle produce ID in the event of a traffic stop. But armed government workers cannot simply demand ID at random from pedestrians – nor stop motorists at random (with the exception of “safety” and DUI checkpoints) and demand the driver present ID.

With faceprinting, those protections become irrelevances – in principle at least and probably also in practice.

If the cameras are acute enough – and they probably are – then your face is being pictured every time you are within range of a camera and being compared with the faceprint that is on file in the government database – that picture probably having been taken when you got your driver’s license.

Which is in fact a REAL ID.

The REAL ID law was passed back in 2005, during the reign of the Great Decider – who also gave us the Heimatsicherheitsdienst, or Homeland Security Department. It sounds better, so much more right, in the original German. (And given the history of the Bush family in this respect, their liking for such peculiarly German things is not coincidental.)

The REAL ID is a biometric ID imposed on us by the necessity of having to get a government permission slip not just to drive but to live – unless you’re living in a tent under an old bridge somewhere. You cannot obtain legal employment or open a bank account or buy anything substantial without “proper ID.” So while you’re not technically forced by law to submit to being faceprinted and having other biometric “tags” taken (given is more accurate – as in the sense of cattle tags) you effectively have no choice.

They will take your faceprint and it will be used against you and will be used before you’ve actually done anything to justify it being used against you.

Well, justified in the antiquarian sense of your having had to have done something or other to at least arouse suspicion first. We’re all presumptively “persons of interest” now.

And now you know it.

. . .

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135 COMMENTS

I don’t think there is a master data base of faces being kept by Big Brother/Sister. At least not for people who have not be selected for a special treatment. However there is the drivers license photos and passport photos and many other forms of govt ID w/ pictures. They can also use FaceBook, etc.
To do a “faceprint” is easy. Just get out your cell phone and snap. If the law enforcers do that and run that photo using special software comparing it to photos on file, viola, you have an easy way of finding out who is whom. Supposedly this is only for “official” law enforcement agencies and may be somewhat more complicated to do that what is seen on say, NCIS TV shows. But the existing data bases cover most adults.
Evidently this clown in MD wasn’t cooperating so they did the facial recognition to expedite his ID.
All new tech will be eventually or quickly used by the State for control of citizens. Count on it. Only public opposition to blatant privacy violations will limit this at all. Since even libertarians don’t want known criminals running loose went wanted for crimes, there is always a trade off.

Muggles [Haha, love that name! Almost as good as a real-life customer of mine once- a Mr. Mugnow. -I kept picturing Daffy Duck yelling “Mug him later!!!”]

Anyhoo….. They say Facebook is now the largest repository of pictures in the world (!)- and they’ve been on a quest to acquire good front-on facial photos of their users, not just by pics that people post and label….but by disabling people’s accounts, and then telling them they need to submit a facial photo to “verify their ID” before they can regain access….even though those people never submitted a photo to begin with, and thus Assbook has no way of knowing if it’s them or not, to verify the account…it just wants the photos which it can link to a verified name a profile…..and of course, the average idiotus Americanus obediently and unquestioningly complies.

I believe THAT will be the goobermint’s main database because they actually roll out an integrated one of their own based on driver’s Lic. photos, etc.

Farcebook hasn’t demanded a facial picture from me yet, but if that happens I will suddenly look like Henry David Thoreau or Lysander Spooner. If a color picture is demanded, then I will suddenly appear to be Davy Crockett since pictures of a painting of him are online. I only use Farcebook to keep track of relatives who live far away. Unlike most people, I ‘friend, very few people.

To those who say “I have nothing to hide…” I present this story. Once I picked up a passenger at the airport and drove him home. He squared up with me, and I went on my merry way. A few minutes after I had gone, the man called me back, wondering if he had left his jacket in my back seat. I checked, and sure enough, he did. He informed me that he really needed the jacket back, because he had left his prescription pain killers in the pocket. And would I please check the jacket to see if they were still there? Indeed they were. I turned around, went back to his house, and dropped off his belongings.
Now, what would have happened if I had gotten pulled over for speeding or a California stop on the way back to his place? What would have happened to me if they guy had never called me back to ask about his meds?
“What are these pills, sir?”
“I have no idea. I’ve never seen them before.”
“Yeah. Right. Step out of the car, please, and put both hands on the hood…”
Even if I won in court, the lawyer fees would be a huge financial blow.

Eric, what a great article. Love your work! One thing I’d like to mention on this one… There actually are some states where they are legally allowed to stop pedestrians and ask them for ID for pretty much no reason. It’s called the Stop and Identify law. Of course, technically speaking, they’re supposed to have probable cause but we all know how easy it is for the cop to just say he had probable cause and the court will believe him. Sickening stuff in today’s Amerika.

Off topic and … kinda mushy. After reading all of these comments, I just want to say I love you people. In a no homo; Platonic way. I wish more people in the USA were like you. Maybe then there would be a reason to actually celebrate the upcoming “Dependence Day”. Instead, I think my celebration this year will consist of me dressing all in black, throwing ashes on my head, and wailing like a grief stricken Middle Eastern female.

Anyone know the feasability of building up artificial sand islands in international waters, ala China in the South China Sea? I’m thinking of launching a kickstarter campaign lol … $#!% if only.

An acquaintance of mine has practiced a form of “monkey wrenching” for decades. I, myself, would never do such a thing of course. He makes it a practice to use varying forms of his name. He gets mail at different addresses, real and electronic. He seems to thoughtlessly transpose numbers and letters with distressing frequency. Never intentionally, of course. These days I’m guessing he sometimes wears glasses, sometimes doesn’t, sometimes has a mustache, sometimes a beard, sometimes clean shaven, different hats, varied clothing styles, etc. Just a guess.

This is all based, he tells me, on the idea that so much contradictory and “fuzzy” info eventually leads the IP guys to more or less toss or bury this accumulation of confusing data rather than going to the considerable effort of trying to reconcile it. People being what they are. This came from one of those data guys. Is what he tells me. I dunno, but if everyone made it as difficult as possible I’m guessing it just might gum up the system.

From what I’ve seen, that stuff doesn’t really work these days, unless one has multiple actual addresses, and internet devices/phones with different service providers, and can manage to keep all of the personas totally separate, with no cross-pollination.

I mean, I can Goo-ghoul my creepy sister’s name, and a few sites will come up which correlate all of her various aliases to her real name and address and previous addresses, and known relatives, etc. Google any the aliases, and it quickley leads to her. And that’s just a cursory simple search by an unsavvy nobody like me…..

I’ve never taken it that far but pissing in the data pool works rather well. If there’s no legal or financial reason for me to tell the truth I lie about my personal information online. For instance if a social media site wants my birthday I make something up. If they want to know where I work, I make something up. There are like minded people out there. Someone tried to stop lying by creating software comparing against a database and rejecting things that weren’t real. But other people had long ago polluted that pool with fictional businesses, high schools, colleges, and so on from movies and TV. None the less some sites have done a scary good job putting my data together but then some of the pollution hits their data engine’s intake and then they have garbage results a few months later. So long as that swirl of error is out there nothing seems to stay accurate for long.

I also have the advantage that my real name is rather anonymizing all in itself and I share it with two people who’s career fame blots out any use of goo-ghoul to find me.

I do the same; it might be worth an article. Like you, I always alter details such as DOB and where I live and went to school (etc.) when dealing with various forms which do not have any teeth.

Speaking of that. I would like to know how it came to pass that we are required – threatened with criminal prosecution – to give evidence against ourselves on tax forms, in stunningly obvious affront to the 5th Amendment? How did they get around that, all those years ago?

Even if I merely refuse to answer the question in re health insurance – no untrue answer, just no answer – I am subject to being punished.

A thing to consider as we approach the day when we “celebrate our freedom.”

By obfuscating that the law does not actually impose a tax liability or filing obligation on the average person. By making it technically a matter of “voluntary compliance” there is no 5th Amendment issue. For this reason they will also go apeshit on your ass if you alter the jurat with anything such as “signature compelled under duress.” They need to keep up the legal fiction that you are complying “voluntarily.” (The info is out there should you wish to check it out, people like Larken Rose and John Kotmair and others have done the research. However I do not advise anyone to take any action other than perhaps holding out with a “not guilty” vote if they happen to be a juror in a tax case. You’re dealing with thugs and gangsters. They WILL break your legs if you do not “voluntarily comply” with the smokescreen they have erected.)

That is damned interesting. On the one hand, the theft – whoops, taxation – is “voluntary.” But on the other hand, if you don’t “volunteer,” they can without due process simply seize your assets (and you). And coerce you to provide evidence that can and will be used against you in a criminal proceeding.

As I said there’s been a lot of research and there’s a lot of information out there. However you need to be able to separate wild pseudo-legal theories (i.e., “strawmen”, “upper-case names,” etc.) from factual analysis of the law.

As I recall you’re at least somewhat familiar with Larken Rose’s work. Another, very detailed, look into the tax code is a 6-part video series produced by the late John Kotmair back in the 1990s. The feds attempted to stop Kotmair’s distribution of this material by permanent federal injunction, but It is still available from other parties on Youtube:

Just a couple of places to start looking at this stuff if interested. However I must reiterate that it is too dangerous to make use of this material except as a juror. You really are dealing with a group of murderous thugs who make the private-sector Mafia look like choir boys.

Sad thing is: Even the defenses which may’ve worked in the past, are not guaranteed to work in the present- as the goobermint becomes increasingly lawless; plus there’s no telling what a jury will do.

The cases that had a positive outcome, were likely just flukes that occurred because they had a few decent people on the jury.

And it’s funny, how none of those cases are used as precedents. Any other matter, they would be….but when it comes to extrotion, they’ll convict you tomorrow on the very same charges that someone beat yesterday by proving that there is no law compelling them to file/etc.

In a tax court, we have little more chance than a Huguenot before the Pope. Even Larken Rose went to the can for a year, thanks to those bastards.

That’s why although I believe it is good for people to be informed, if for no other reason than to increase the pool of informed jurors, I otherwise advise people NOT to get directly involved.

It really does not matter what the law says. Once they latch onto you it does not matter how correct your arguments and position are. The federal criminal gang, as well as their nasty little brethren in the states, are going to do whatever the hell they want to regardless. The courts will not stop them. The only concern of judges is to preserve their corrupt system and keep themselves from being targeted.

I’ve seen way too many people hurt by those parasitical maggots. Best to find other ways to fight them.

Exactly, Jason. The only sensible thing to do to guarantee some measure of freedom, is to not enter into relationships with the enemy/not narc on oneself; and to do as much as you can to fly below the radar.

Sad thing is, they snag most people when they’re very young- with debt; 9-5 jobs, etc. where “you just follow the rules…it’s just a routine procedure; everyone does it”.

When I was young, I used to enjoy reading entrepreneurial books…. I soon got disgusted, because there wasn’t a one of them that didn’t start out with at least half of the book dedicated to obtaining licenses and doing bookkeeping (just for the purpose of narcing on oneself) and getting a tax number and EID, etc.- it was like “How to please your overlord and guarantee that you will lose your freedom and privacy, and put money in his pocket if you make so much as a dime in profit”.

Eric, I was always very ontramanurial [entrepreneurial]. When I was 16 I had plans of rehabbing abandoned apartment buildings in NYC and being a landlord tycoon, as well as having various other businesses….but luckily, I soon got a glimpse from afar of the reality of such things.

Being an unpaid tax collector for the state, and having my every action regulated and taxed; and begging for permission like a five year-old making supplications for a new toy, were the very things I was looking to avoid by being entrepreneurial.

That was when I started learning to keep things micro and fly below the radar, which I’ve happily done since the age of 17.

Even 40 years ago, it was still a big effort to eek out such freedom- ‘specially in a city- If i were starting out today, it’d probably be impossible. Just shows you how much freedom we’ve lost, even though we were already under heavy tyranny 40 years ago.

Especially when a Socialist Insecurity slave number is demanded and I don’t feel like arguing I’ll pony up a fake one. I have a list of dead peoples’ SSNs to pick from. (Richard Nixon’s is one of my favorites.) Here’s a few to choose from:

Re: Jason’s SSN idea. Yes, very cute but beware. All SSNs are initially assigned using a code (first three digits) based on location of issuance. So borrowing a SSN might raise questions if you’ve never been to say, Vermont.
Also, by law all morticians, funeral home directors, etc. must report the SSNs of the deceased they handle to the SSA (Social Security Administration). Either they or LEO does that. So that SSN reported goes into the Death Index (a master list of SSNs from the deceased). Which is why using one of these for any purpose where Uncle gets it (including local govts) will pop up as a fake or false ID. Using that under some vague federal statute is a crime in itself. Or for tax filing, etc. Not a new idea and not one to be taken lightly.

It’s not a matter of being “cute”, it’s a matter of protecting privacy. I do this when confronted with non-gunvermin nincompoop apparatchiks who demand the SSN (Slave Serial Number) to deliver services.

If gunvermin scum demand the number I just refuse to give it. My slave card (which I was tricked into obtaining at a young age) states clearly right on its face: “FOR SOCIAL SECURITY PURPOSES – NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION” and I’m holding the filthy blighters to that.

Ya know Mugs, the goobermint is very “loose” when it comes to SSN’s. Anything else, the minute you’d enter a wrong number it’d be caught- but not with SSN’s- this is because it allows illegal immigrants to work and use a fake number and pay into Uncle’s pocket….it’s what Uncle wants- more money; and a way to have the illegals in the “workforce”.

I’ve heard of cases where 10 different people were paying into one SS “account”- simultaneously from several different states. Obviously, that exists because Uncle just doesn’t want to stop it.

Even when I was a kid, one time in my life, I used a made up SSN (Thankfully, was smart enough even then not to want to have any relationship with the IRS)…and it was no problemo- never heard a word about it. That was a long time ago…but it’s still the same today, in the age of fingerprints and face scanners and barcodes and instant communication between databases….stuff you couldn’t get away with with anything else even 40 years ago, is still “no problemo senor” with the SSA.

Hilariously, this outdated-and-*never*-well-written law from 1986 makes it a federal offense to- among other things- violate the terms of service of a website or service, which often (site-to-site) includes knowingly posting inaccurate or deceptive information. It’s all bound up in a tortured reading the already-sloppy-law to construe violation of a TOS as an unauthorized access, functionally akin to using stolen login credentials or outright cracking/hacking in to a network.

The USC in its modern, /burgeoning/ form is large and muddled enough that there’s always something to be worried about with the feds, especially if you’ve drawn their gaze already for something else they can’t quite get a handle on more directly.

Lying to obscure yourself isn’t intent to commit fraud. If someone is selected by the tortured reading for prosecution for merely violating the terms of service the fall out will not be good for government. At most it will be a piling on for someone the government can portray as despicable criminal for real offenses.

“Some people may not object, of course. If you have nothing to hide . . . ”

I HATE it when people shrug at government surveillance and say “So what? I got nothing to hide.” My stock answer is “Well, then, you won’t object to random strip searches and body cavity searches of your wife and daughters, then, just to make sure that they’re not hiding any contraband in their vaginas…”

I’ve posed this very question with high IQ, educated libs at various dinner and dance parties. I specifically mention that the TSA scans are essentially an electronic strip search, showing all anatomical features including breasts and genitalia, Almost always they evince no discernible concern. It’s just a non-issue for them. Both fathers and mothers do not seem to care, as though they thought this would never happen to them or their daughters, and if it did, the scan would be anonymous, and this is just one of the minor inconveniences to be tolerated for the sake of safety. As researchers have confirmed, libs really do have a higher disgust threshold than the mean, and contemporary young and middle-aged White men are showing significantly lower testosterone levels than their fathers and grandfathers.

Makes perfect sense. Have you seen the way half of these kids are dressed? The 11 year-old daughter could stand on the luggage carousel making obscene gestures and saying “Right here baby, fifty bucks!”- and the parents probably wouldn’t bat an eye.

Buddy of mine and I were discussing this the other day. At the coffee shop where I go to work, there is a constant parade of teen (and even pre-teen) girls dressed in shorts so tight and small it has to be seen to be believed. This is apparently routine dress for high school/junior high girls. My friend – who has a 12-year-old daughter – asks: How do the parents allow this? I replied: I don’t think they have any choice; kids just do what they want to.

And the sad thing is, Eric- it’s not just a recent thing. They’ve been dressing that way for well over 20 years in many places. I remember discussing this with a friend of mine in the mid 90’s as we stuck behind a cattle car…errr…school bus- seeing some of the junior-high disembarking. At the time, his daughter was about 8. Today, she’s married with kids!

And the parents have absolutely no control- not that most would have the sense to exercise any, anyway- as you often see the middle-aged mothers dressed and bedecked just as badly as the kids!

Heck, never mind the gov’t indoctrination and all that, if I had a kid, I’d be horrified just to let it be in the company of these other little monsters! Take the best kid and put him amongst these undiscliped cretins, and he will be ruined.

I have attempted the same; got baffled looks, implying I’m neurotic, exaggerating, etc. And yet, the principle is there. If one must submit to a government goon putting his hands on our genitals over our pants, why not in our pants as well? Especially with regard to women but men, too. Both sexes have “prison wallets,” so to speak. Spread ’em!

If not, why not?

Couldn’t a “terrorist,” an “enemy of freedom” have a phial of deadly poison or some such in his anus (or her vagina)?

And I agree with you in re men. I do not think it’s accidental that the Unshaved Look now abounds. It’s one of the few ways that gelded males can be “manly” nowadays.

My personal favorite for absurd entertainment on the way down, at least regarding the TSA, is their particular “solution” to dangerous liquids. Their alleged concern is that fluids might be solutions of dangerous reactants, volatile if mixed together, possibly carried for nefarious purposes. Their procedural solution is to take all these potentially dangerous reactants over a certain volume, and throw them together into a 55-gallon polypropylene barrel with a thin polyethylene liner, situated right at the ‘security checkpoint’ for easy accidental mixing.

A quick study of the history of asymmetrical conflict will confirm that security checkpoints and guard posts are popular targets in ongoing hostile campaigns for this very reason. Functionally, their’s is a chokepoint where all their own staff and all the milling passengers are queued for screening and papers checks, with no easy means to move away quickly and no way to take cover, should the barrel-o-fun prove a bit more ‘interesting’ than hoped.

If you assume their stated premises, this is a massive, focused threat to public safety that they have themselves created with half-baked procedures. If you reject their stated premises or simply assess risk without undue alarmism, then the whole damn thing is pointless anyway.

This all without addressing the standalone value of security-in-oneself borne of proper liberty- even a simple rational evaluation of the relevance to stated goals reveals the thing to be a carnival sideshow.

Exactly, Mike- That is exactly what I say to idiots who say “Ya gotta have ‘security’ to protect you from *terrrrrroristssss*”- If a real terrorist were to actually be amongst the cattle, he’d simply pull the cord at the checkpoint, just like they do in Is-ra-hell and such places- and have done for decades.

What’s next, gasoline-control, for fear that “anyone can make a molotov cocktail? Or maybe being searched and scanned to get on a bus, because in the Mid-East, they’re a frequent target?

If there really were non-governmental terrorists in our midst, they’d be having a field day and be completely unhindered by this BS. The only people this stuff affects, are average harmless citizens…the very people whom it is designed to scare and control. The real terrorists are in DC, and the polling places.

I think the real reason they’re hyping this facial recognition stuff as if it were reality on a mass-surveillance basis- is to take the average dolt’s mind off of the REAL extant, pervasive surveillance, which is accomplished through their idiot-phones, and secondarily by license plate readers.

Those things are already here; in use; and efficient. Having a registered number to scan and identify with a known person, is one thing. Having a camera pick faces out of a crowd and scan a database of hundreds of millions in order to ascertain who they’re dealing with, is something else, and in no way efficient nor even really possible on a usable level.

And why would they even need that, when 98% of the population carry their own tracking device? (I pulled that number out of my ass, but it’s probably not far from reality! Needn’t even be a smartphone- as any cell phone can be easily tracked via triangulation).

But this is just one reason why I’ve long said that mass media is pure mind-control; and especially the “news”.

A quick side note about the “terabytes of storage known to exist”: Googuhl and government agencies that do a lot of tracking are now into exabytes of storage. (1 exabyte = 1,000,000 terabytes.) One advantage we have is that it takes a lot of time, computing power, and “human resources” to sort through and categorize all of that data. At the same time, Googuhl is working hard to automate the process and make it faster (one of their primary motives for developing “artificial intelligence” is to sort data quickly for governments).

I’ve got an iPhone, and it tracts me where ever I go, and stores it, in it’s memory…
A friend of mine told me about it, and initially I disbelieved him….
He walk me thru the process, and there it was….
The funny thing was, my wife questioned me about one of the places that showed up,
and I had to point out that it was right next door to her beauty salon where she went while I waited for her in the car…

Recognizing a face under perfect lighting conditions from close by is a whole other problem than doing it from afar. You can’t see it, but iPhone face recognition paints an infrared grid on your face and scans it in. You can’t do that with mass surveillance. What they can do is have arrays of very high resolution cameras scanning crowds, and then telephotos look at people who are “interesting” in some way.

What really scares me is that there is iris recognition technology that works reliably from about 100 feet, like in Minority Report.

This stuff- scary as the very idea is, is much like electric cars, or driverless cars: They haven’t quite figured it out yet. They’re pimping and promoting it, and making it seem like it’s already being implemented, but the fact is, as Eric points out, it’s been 13 years and Real ID isn’t even fully implemented yet. Imagine if they have to switch to iris scanning or some other technology? Imagine more bankrupt states balking, or the next major crash….

The incompetence of the government may prove to be the best ally we’ve got! While there are occasionally exceptional individuals – creatures who are good at the sort of work government involves – most are mediocrities at best; time-servers and clock punchers. People who would never rise above night shift assistant manager at Dollar General out in the real world.

Unfortunately, it isn’t governments working on this, they just want the tech. The bright assholes in San Jose and SF are working the massive profit opportunity to the max. Literally every business and government agency on the planet is a potential customer if they get it right.. make no mistake, the tech to correlate all of this info into a digestible format already exists. The biggest obstacles are probably the marketing message so the proles don’t go bat shit crazy once it dawns on them (I know, unlikely) what this means.

Yup, there are lots of unprincipled smart people working on this stuff. Case in point, Palantir. Based in Palo Alto, backed by Peter Thiel, and building out pure evil. I’ve stopped talking to people who I know who work there.

But as others have already pointed out, the smarts comes from the real world…. The gov’t employees are just the order followers- and those dumb, unthinking lazy clock-punchers are the best at that. They’re the ones who make the best Nazis.

*They* don’t want people who can think, or who are competent on their own (Then they wouldn’t be dependent, and might not follow an order, or might leave if asked to do unsavory things); or who are principled/guided by morality. They just want dumb order followers.

That is why, as came out in a recent court case, in NY, they will not hire anyone to be a pig, whose IQ proves to be above 103. And here we thought that giving a test to pig-wannabes was to screen out the dummies… In reality, it’s to screen out the ones of average intelligence.

Indeed… I suspect that within a few years it will be hard to find a new computer or cell phone that doesn’t require you to use a scan of some kind to access it. Many already have this “feature.” And once it’s in your computer or phone, it’s probably in their system, too.

You can be sure, too, that if one’s fingerprints/facemap/etc (So THAT’s why they call it “FACEbook”!) are in their iPhone (etc.) they are also in the hands of Apple (etc.)….and are thus shared with the gooberment.

People are just giving up all of this data, and making it even easier for the overlords.

I’ve done enough work with computer vision to understand a lot of its limitations. The state of the art in facial recognition right now is about 99% accurate, meaning it will have false positives and false negatives about 1% of the time. Now, imagine an airport like Chicago O’Hare, where a million people pass through each day. A 1% false positive rate means that 10,000 people will be mis-identified. The way this usually works is you compare against a database of people of interest, so this is potentially 10,000 people who will be harassed due to mistaken identity. The tech’s not ready, and anybody who says otherwise is trying to sell something.

Surveillance is a force multiplier – it allows a small number of thugs to control the masses.

BTW, here in OreGONE, to get your concealed-carry permit — itself a violation of rights not to mention intelligence since by definition a concealed gun means carryers will never be asked to show their permit since noone will even know they have a gun in the first place … but you can open carry without a permit which makes no sense at all … if anything it should be the other way around, but anyways … to get a permit you get PRE-BOOKED at the sheriff department — they take your picture and fingerprints of every single finge! AS IF you’re a suspicious person likely to commit a crime just because you want to carry a gun. But criminals just conceal carry anytime they want and don’t get pre-booked because they don’t get a permit at all … which makes me realize that the criminals are smarter than the law-abiding people nowadays.

But Opp- isn’t THAt kind of accuracy only in situations where the subjects are “posing” for the camera- as opposed to cameras at a distance just picking people out of a moving crowd?

Plus, even if the technology were good enough, a comprehensive integrated database is still only a pipe dream- it’ll take a while before all the various agencies in every state that collect facial data start assembling everything together and sharing….. Scary enough that that day will come soon enough- or just knowing that it’s in the works….but the fact is, it is not here quite yet.

It’s insulting, isn’t it? An egregious affront to freedom. And just think about it: Vermont, the state where old Bolshevik Bernie Sanders resides, actually abides by natural law concealed carry. Go figure. I don’t understand this country. Where the hell are the real libertarians/ancaps supposed to go?

GT, a little o/t, but since you mentioned Comrade Bernie, a wholesaler I do business with usually makes little humorous remarks on his email flyers notifying his clients of clearance prices and stuff.

During the presidential campaign he said that the Vermont legislature was trying to rush through an emergency bill to build a wall around Vermont to keep Bernie from coming back from DC. The plan was, he said, to make the DNC pay for it. It was funny at the time.

OMG, that’s great! Haha! But a fence. Hmm. Not quite good enough. If only we could get a secret initiative to lure all of the vipers (including “grandpa Bernie”, of course) INTO DC at the same time, and then drop a giant crystalline dome on top of that cesspool … we’d be golden. I don’t think too much time would have to pass before they would begin cannibalizing eachother. I’ll start looking into materials right now 😉

Not always true, that. I can usually spot a concealed handgun, and I’d assume that plenty of cops can as well. I agree with you on the principle of the thing, that the RKBA is not to be infringed at all, in any measure, according to the 2nd Amendment.

The trouble is that the Constitution doesn’t have any bearing on what the government does. Most of what is enforced today, at least in federal law, is unconstitutional.

Got stuck listening to the head police poohbah in charge of camera preening and dispensing bullshit today, discussing this case.

Natch, he heaped praise on the 300 plus cops that were hut hutting about, and how they were so brave and saved live and were there so quickly and blah blah blah.

No, you guys did nothing but sweep up the mess. If the terrified citizens who could do nothing but cower under their desks in fear had not had their right to defend themselves taken away by government mandate, and the WILL to defend themselves taken away by being raised and living in toxic stew of dependency and mild mannered slavery, just one person may have actually been able to stop this before a bunch of people got killed or injured.

The only reason why REAL ID isn’t fully rolled out yet, (in spite of existing since 2005) is ironically enough the incompetence of a number of states. Since the feds so far haven’t found a way to do a national ID yet (a wet dream of many government types for decades now), the states got stuck with the job.

Some states have been getting waivers over a decade already on REAL ID. The feds patience is wearing thin, as airport travelers may discover next year, when their drivers license won’t be “good” enough for plane travel. Maybe that will give it some bad press, but I doubt it in this day and age.

I doubt I will ever fly again – at least not commercially. Because I cannot abide the Blue Geek Squad. It’s insufferable. My sister – who lives in CA – doesn’t grok my attitude; says I should just grin and bear it; that being able to go places is what matters.

In my own case, my non REAL ID drivers license doesn’t expire until 2022. I took advantage of the online “don’t need to come into the DMV office” in 2016 to renew last time. They reused my old picture so when it expires it will be 12 years old.

Ditto! Just renewed mine a few months ago- good till 2022 also- and hopefully I’ll be out of here by then. If not, Kentuckians have the option of choosing a non-Real ID lic. thus far, anyhow….. (My county is not even offering Real ID until next year, as I found out when I specified “NON-Real ID when I went in to renew! -some counties here have it already, and thus give you the option. I don’t need to go anywhere a regular lic. isn’t good enough)

Ditto that Eric, go for the Marlon Brando “Godfather” look! My nanny state has just started this nonsense and predictably the process of renewing a license now takes 4+ hours when it had been fairly quick (for the Registry) to do a simple renewal. What I find deliciously ironic is how they want you to prove you are who you are; kind of like admitting their predecessors didn’t do a proper job of tracking me for the past 71 years I’ve been on this planet.
Also wondering where all the Evangelicals are hiding out on this, if this RealID crap isn’t the “ Mark of the Beast” I don’t know what is.

I dunno about evangelicals, Mike, but the more serious (i.e. non-mainstream, non-501c3) Christian community has been LOUDLY warning about this stuff since at least the 80’s.

I tend to think that Real ID, smartphones and the outlawing of cash are all going to come together to constitute the full implementation of the Mark- those things check all of the boxes…and they’re all being put into place right before our eyes.

This is why the government and the media have been working for decades to corrupt, minimize and destroy any semblance of real Christianity- because we are their biggest threat. We knew this stuff was coming, and have been warning against it for quite some time; and we are the ones who will not just go along, because we don’t just oppose it for personal or philosophical reasons.

The fewer of us there are, and the less influence we have, the easier it is for them to do their dastardly deeds. That is why this stuff could never fly even just 50 years ago, when their was still at least some semblance of a Christian ethic still in existence in the majority.

If everyone refused when the TSA was rolled out it would have went away within weeks, but they all submitted like good little slaves.

I’m just waiting for the day when we will need to ask for permission and be granted travel papers from the authorities to be able to travel out of our county, state or FEMA regions in our private internal combustion machines. You know it’s coming, and they only need the right crisis (either real or manufactured) to put it in place.

Agree, Guerrero… and this is why my hate for The Chimp burns with undiminished ferocity. It was that inbred little psychopath who destroyed whatever bits and pieces of the old America managed to survive all the prior things. Now the kriegsverbrecher (and much worse) paints horrible art – like John Wayne Gacy – except The Chimp is not even under house arrest.

The problem is that most people have to fly for their jobs and its business travel the airlines care about. They probably make several times the margin on every business traveler vs the pleasure traveler.

It’s certainly true lots of people have to fly – but there are also lots of people who don’t have to fly. It has to be at least 10-20 percent of the total. And that is a large enough percent to seriously screw with the profitability of air travel. Moreover, it would send an even more important message. It would make plain the fact that lots of people are not willing to accept being gate-raped to fly; and by implication that lots of those forced to fly would not fly if they didn’t have to.

The airlines could have been shamed – transformed into the very image of cattle cars headed east with their cargo for sonderbehandlung.

Eric, I had to fly for the first time under TSA a couple of weeks ago (I am buying a house in the woods in a state a thousand miles away from where I live now and had to get there pronto to close the deal).

I was horrified at the process and more importantly at the complete servility of all of the other passengers at the airport. I immediately looked for ways to resist no matter how small. I deliberately kept putting my feet incorrectly on the yellow footprints inside the anti-5th machine, etc.

But what got me the most was after being “processed”
by putting all of their stuff including their “deadly” shoes into gray plastic totes to be X-rayed how the people would gather up their belongings, put on their shoes and then DUTIFULLY gather the totes and put them back in place! I left the totes right where I put them in the middle of the floor to gather my stuff.

My point is that the people are hopelessly obedient. And damn them all.

Yep, Skunk. Most Americans would be perfectly comfortable living in North Korea, Communist China, or Cuba today. In fact, they’d probably feel too free in such places, and demand more security and safety measures, and interference in their personal lives and relationships.

I stopped flying long before the TSA…I could only IMAGINE what it must be like now.

Instead of a nation of free people who are capable of protecting themselves, we instead have a nation of people who gladly trade the right to protect themselves (and all of their other rights) for the supposed advantage of delegating the responsibility of protection to those who are most apt to harm them. Damn fools!!!!

Ya know, oppressive government is my number 2 reason for wanting to leave this country. My number one reason is that I can’t tolerate having to interact with other Americans anymore!

Talk to the average adult today, and it’s like having a conversation with a 5 year-old. They believe in fairy tales- whether it be the weather forecast, which is always wrong; or some political propaganda, or their subservience to some 5-second sound byte that tells then how to react in a given situation [Sees a puddle in the road- “But the radio said not to drive through standing water…doyee!”]- I want to bang my head against the wall any time I have to deal with any of these creatures!

Best one: Their kid gets a ticket for going 5MPH over the limit…has to pay the ticket, and his insurance goes up. Parent: (instead of being outraged that his kid is being penalized and had to deal with an armed goon when he harmed no one- and in fact that armed goon had to do the very same thing the kid did, in order to catch the kid) “He’ll just have to learn to be more responsible abd follow the rules”!!!!!

Nunz, could not have said it better myself especially the fourth paragraph. I hate to be judgemental but I find it almost impossible not to be. Whenever I am in public like at the grocery store I feel like I am in a zombie movie and I cannot help but find the dolt zombies repulsive.

For the last few years I have been seriously looking into leaving the country. But I am 57 and not good at learning new languages so I have decided to stay but in a freer state. That’s why I am moving to Maine in a few weeks. Good pot laws and good guns laws and very White. I think it is the best option for me. I am dropping out as much as possible.

I come from a fambly of long-livers. I can’t bear the thought of having to go on another 35 or 40 years in what this mess of a country has become; and it’s only getting worse by the day.

The really sad thing: It’s not just the people on the street anymore either- but my own relatives and friends and neighbors…

And if you try and explain something to them- be it the obvious illogicalness of something they repeat from the media; or the way a certain type of business actually works [NO! The soup company DIDN’T suddenly stop the conveyors the day you called to say that you wished their vegetable soup was less tomatoey; recall all of their existing stock from warehouses and store shelves, and have a new product which meets your specifications on the shelf in the store the following week!]….

But it does no good. They look at you like YOU’RE the crazy one! Or say that you’re “too negative” or ask why you can’t just agree and say “Yes, that’s nice!”!!!

It’s like dealing with brainwashed cult members- only now they’re the majority.

PS. Skunks, Be careful about ME. They’ve recently started grasping for more power. They’re just starting to consolidate all of the small rural counties into fewer larger counties…to take away local control + lots of perfunctory local laws and zealous pigs, and they’ve even imported a good many foreigners as of late….. It seems to be on the fast-track to becoming what the rest of the Northeast is….

ID. I don’t know about- The Federales own 80% of the land- and it seems as though the piggies there are especially evil. So many stories of their crimes seem to come from that state- for decades now. WY MT ND SD are probably good bets if you can stand the weather. But the noose is tightening up so much these days- it’s like they’re now turning their attention to the few remaining places that have hitherto escaped control.

There are still some places- central and western KY (NOT eastern!); some spots in TN (Although local uncle in TN seems to be on the hostile side)- Sadly, that’s all I can think of where the weather is hospitable. (And I had spent a lot of time looking!) – The only city people who come to these small, very rural, hard-to-get-to places which are far from any major cities, are other people who are looking to get away from all of the crud- as opposed to just reproducing it in their new locales- and their numbers are kept low because of the inconvenience of location, and lack of any good paying 9-5’s.

Eric,
I take great comfort in the fact I am not the only hold-out with my no-fly rule. I will not subjugate myself to radiation, or physical assault, and just can’t get myself to accept that those two things, which were once avoided and reasonably associated with exhibiting some common sense, should now be accepted as my lot. The theme of excuses for tolerating tyranny is usually one of convenience. I will sacrifice much for the sake of knowing I’m doing my best to live free. The road to hell is paved with the love for such “convenience.” Makes me sick.

I get notes (and posts) such as yours from a fair number of people who have opted out of air travel for the reasons we’re discussing. I just wish it were more people. I think it’s not more because a sufficient majority of Americans don’t understand that sacrificing a principle amounts to sacrificing everything. We have the TSA, in my opinion, because the principle of probable cause-free/random (and thus by definition unreasonable) searches was accepted 20 years prior in the form of DUI checkpoints, which came into use back in the ’80s. If it is acceptable to subject people at random to being to being “screened” on the road, simply because they are traveling by car, then why shouldn’t they also have to accept similar (and worse) treatment to fly?

If you are required to prove you are not a “dangerous drunk” – in the absence of any reason to think you might be – then why shouldn’t you be forced to prove you are not a “terrorist”?

It’s not rocket science. But it does take the ability to think logically, in terms of principles – which most Americans seem to not have. They are people who view each particular thing out of any broader context, so they cannot see the proverbial forest because of the trees. They have also been conditioned for generations now to servility, deference to authority. This is perhaps the most profoundly un-American quality imaginable. It is the slave mentality once characteristic of Soviet proles – and this explains why America is becoming more Soviet with each passing year. Even to the extent of resembling Soviet proles, physically. Behold, the people of Wal Mart… .

PS: I have a favor to ask. Please stick around! Libertarian women are a rare breed. Invite friends. We need more!

Hi Eric,
Yes, being guilty until proven innocent places one on defense 24/7. What a crappy way to live. Do most people even know that being an American meant being innocent until proven guilty? To observe the cowering and rounded shoulders, as people so willingly accept their chains, (the servility you speak of) is truly the hardest thing I’ve ever had to come to terms with. What makes some so aware of every infringement, yet others so oblivious, willing to give themselves over to such a state of unhappiness and utter meaninglessness?
The Wal-Mart phenomenon is such a trip. I don’t know who those people are, or where they come from. (One theory is, they store them in the basement.)

About your P.S., thank you. I am most comfortable here, and am grateful for all the actual thinking that goes on. Seriously, I thank God for you, your site and the good people who attend it.

I have one female libertarian friend; she is busy raising two girls, and one of them is turning into a beautiful, liberty-minded young lady! I send her links from time-to-time and hopefully, one of these days, she’ll have time to leave you a note, too. : )

Talk about guilty until proven innocent! I got pulled over by the local blue boy Thursday evening. Expired tabs, no insurance, expired permission slip (that one I didn’t know.)
Gives me a ticket for the tabs and insurance. Then proceeds to give me a lecture on how no insurance is a criminal offense. I asked how? He says “it’s against the law.” I told him I wasn’t disputing that part, but how can it be criminal? Where is the victim? We had a couple minutes of polite discussion on the subject and I let it drop. He couldn’t grasp the idea that there need to be a victim to have a crime. Gave me the stock answer of everyone, and when I blew that out of the water he says the person I get in an accident with. I have never been in an accident, no reason to believe I will be, and have never had any type of citation until now.

My sympathies, amigo… this has happened to me, too. Been pulled over for some contrived “offense” involving harm to no one… it doesn’t register with the robotic enforcers of the law. Mark that. It is no accident that they are now Law Enforcers, their own term. They enforce laws. Notions (questions about) right or wrong are no longer to be considered. Just The Law.

Haha…”little twit”- That reminds me: One night when I was bored in the winter, I looked up this kid I remembered from junior high 40 years ago: He was kinda small of stature; liked to act like a bully when afforded the opportunity; and liked to snoop in people’s confidential business and narc on them.

One of my best friends is very pro “law enforcement.” He and I have discussions about this business often. He takes the position that “most” are “good dudes,” based on his knowing a few of them personally. I ask him whether these “good dudes” man probable cause-free checkpoints and force people who’ve done nothing to suspect them of anything to prove they aren’t drunk and submit to being interrogated and ID’d, their vehicles given at least a cursory visual search.

Do “good dudes” do such things?

Do “good dudes” cuff and cage people over bullshit laws such as the arbitrary prohibition of one “substance” (pot, say) while themselves freely imbibing other (arbitrarily legal) substances? How does that parse, exactly?

Doesn’t one have to be a nihilist, a morally obtuse person, to be a law enforcement officer? Because such a person doesn’t care about right or wrong except as these are defined as synonymous with legal and not legal. Put another way, a law enforcer is a kind of machine that does violence to anyone who has broken the law – whatever the law may be. Because it is against the law to break the law.

Such a person cannot be a “good dude,” because “good dudes” don’t define their actions according to what The Law says but according to what is morally right vs. morally wrong.

Well said, Eric. I have been telling people for a long time that “legal” and “Illegal” are not the same as right and wrong. Most folks don’t seem to grasp the idea. As for myself, I try to do what is morally right and don’t worry about the legal part.

This – getting people to separate out “legal/illegal” and right/wrong – is an imperative if we are to recover any lost ground. Related to this is the idea of having to produce a victim, evidence of harm caused to an actual human being (not “the government”) to establish that a crime has been committed. And if no victim can be produced, no evidence of harm (tangible harm, not hurt feelings) caused, then there is no crime and punishing a person is on the face of it tyrannical.

Very well-said, Eric! (You say what I’m thinking, but much more eloquently and articulately than I ever could!).

What you said there reminds me of Larken Rose’s video “All Order Followers Are Bad People”.

People such as your friend don’t even know the half of it. He should know that anyone with a conscience would not even tolerate “the academy”- they would walk out when told point-blank how they’re supposed to view the average citizen; and taught tricks to enable them to trick people out of their rights and gain advantage over them without technically being in violation of “the law” which they are supposed to be defenders of.

I’ve heard all of the stories- lots of pigs among my relatives- Seems every cousin, nephew/niece, aunt/uncle etc. has at least one kid who is a pig. I don’t bother with any of them; they make me sick. The attitude of utter disdain they have for the common person, and how they unabashedly show it when among their own people, is utterly disgusting.

One always used to brag: “I’ve arrested most of parents of the kids my kid goes to school with”. (I’m sure he still does- but I severed contact with him c.20 years ago….

Did you see that article that was floating around a month or two ago, in which 8 “cadets” walked out of the “academy” in I believe it was Houston, and went to the media, trying to expose the disgusting and nefarious things the new porkers were being taught?

Of course, it was swept under the rug almost immediately. One of the whistleblowers said “I wanted to become a cop because I wanted to help people; not to treat them all as enemies and infidels”.

Anyone who thinks that ANY cop today is a “good guy” is either seriously ignorant of reality, or themselves devoid of morality and conscience. But that is exactly what the average a-dolt thinks today- I hear it over and over- “There are a few bad apples, but most of them are good guys”! Refer them to 8 million videos of blatant violations of people’s most basic rights, while the pig is just following “standard procedure”, and they just keep repeating the “few bad apple” mantra.

Good luck with ascertaining probable cause before handing over your ID during a traffic stop. Their body cameras will ID you without having to explain a thing. And if that 90% accuracy isn’t good enough, especially the case with darker skin colors, and it ID’s you incorrectly as a wanted, well they might just give you a wood shampoo or worse, without having seen if your plastic card said vs. what their earpiece or cruiser computer is telling them. It was about a month ago the largest manufacturer of police body cameras put out a press release about implementing AI/facescanning and having an earpiece SIRI or the like telling them who’s-da-badguy in real time, ofcourse out of everyone it has seen, identifying whoever is in range of their camera.

The pigs in England, where spy cameras on every street corner and in every public place have become ubiquitous, say that the facial recognition crap is inaccurate NINETY percent of the time.

But just like the NSA spying on every citizen, while accomplishing absolutely NOTHING, the main value to the overlords is the idea that these things implant in everyone’s brain- i.e. making the state appear more capable, omnipotent, and powerful than it really is.

No one seems to notice that it’s regular people who have to fear the NSA, while “terrorists” couldn’t give a flying fart about it.

And of course, at some point, things thing become closer to reality….which is much easier for *them* to achieve once all of the mundanes just accept the existence of such things, and say “Oh well, what are you going to do?”- and making those mundanes think that there is already a functional system in place and working, AND showing on the TV that it was used to “fight crime” and “keep them safe”.

So where was this MD. shooting? A school, I suppose? A typical non-Muslim white guy I suppose? (The CIA rarely uses blacks or Muslims to pull off these things, as they wouldn’t want to portray them in a negative light- make white people the problem, and then the hoardes of socialist ghetto-dwellers and invaders will gladly favor “taking away their guns”…)

I wonder if there are any effective countermeasures to prevent automatic face-tracking on the street? Big mirrored sunglasses so they can’t get a lock on your eyes? Wide-brimmed hats to fend off high-mounted cameras? (Maybe hats will make a comeback.)

This is real police-state tyranny staring us down. As the late great Richard Farina sung so long ago “God bless America without any doubt – and I figured it was time to get out…” – but unfortunately at my age I’m stuck in this Orwellian nightmare along with the “I have nothing to hide” mundanes.

Guer, just for kicks, you should try wearing a ski mask to the bank one day… 🙂
_______

Jason, you got me beat! For the last 16 years, I’ve maintained a small checking account…just ’cause it’s convenient to be able to cash a check once in a while. The balance has never exceeded $2K- and is most often in the hundreds…..

A ski mask would result in a “Calling all Cars” and the local wanna be bad asses with their shaved heads and Oakleys would be on the scene in minutes, along with the Sheriffs deputies since they are based in my town. They all carry Glocks so I would be in fear of an accidental discharge more than an actual shooting. I bet I could wear a set of mirrored aviators along with my cap the next time I go in since they all know me by name, but I won’t push it.

It’s the same here, now that I live in Bumpkinsville. I can into the bank in the bigger town where I go shopping, and there’s never a line. I kid around with the girls- just like 40 or 50 years ago- it’s very pleasant.

Meanwhile…even 20 years ago in NY- walk into a bank, and the “girls” are behind bulletproof glass. Everything you say or do is highly scrutinized; you are treated like a criminal; it takes a long time, even if there isn’t a line. The people that work there seemed like rejects from the DMV…..

There are times I walk into my bank and will see tens of thousands of dollars in bundles sitting on the counters behind the tellers. There is no bulletproof glass or bars to keep one from jumping over or even walking around to where the cash is sitting.

Where I live is a throwback to a better time, where the population is 95% European stock with the rest being illegal Mexicans that have been moving in for the last 20 years, and just a couple of black and mulattos that can be counted on your fingers and toes countywide. The Mexicans around here are good hardworking family types, but they are illegal and driving down the wages for those at the bottom of the skill level. Lately there have also been a few agitators coming into the area (not so much into our small towns, but larger cities close by) to stir the shit up and get these illegals out in the streets with their George Soros made and funded signs. This is happening because we are in congressman Steve King’s district and the Bolsheviks are playing politics.

20 years ago it was 99.9% white European here, and I’m hoping we can hang on to that culture for another 20-30 years since that is the time of my expiration date. That said I am just so grateful that I came of age during the late ’70s and early ’80s when we still had some actual freedom and no big brother surveillance.

Same here where I now live, Guer. And what a pleasant difference compared to the NYC metro area from whence I came!!!! Night and day!

At my bank, they leave the safe wide open during business hours. And access to behind the counter/safe area is not even hindered by anything.

Same too: Hard-working Mexican laborers; very few jigs (But enough to make mulatto babies with the fugly white coalburners)…

But the sad thing is: People living in this paradise have NO clue what it’s like in places that are so infested with foreigners that English is rarely heard; No clue how the schvatzes behave when there are many of them in one area. They instead are taught by the schools and the TV that “all people are the same” and that white people cause problems because they’re raciss and don’t want to share….etc. etc. -and so they have no resistance to the same thing happening here that happened in NY 40 years ago, because they won’t realize the detrimental effects until it’s happened, and then it’s too late- and it IS starting here- as recently, Sand Niggers and Dot-Heads have been purchasing the gas stations (same as NY 40 years ago)- even in the small town closest to me- pop. 300.

My business is primarily cash but I can negotiate checks at a check cashing store when needed. It costs a little but they don’t demand a Socialist Insecurity slave number, just a photo ID. (Used to be you could just walk into the bank the check was drawn on to cash it, but now if you don’t have an account most of them charge more than the check cashing joint! I HATE banks.) Likewise to pay bills I buy money orders.

When you tell the IRS to piss off for decades it’s best not to leave assets laying around for Uncle to pick pick up on. (Look up “judgment proofing.”)

Jason, I operated that way for most of my adult life, too- money-orders, etc. Only problemo is, I could never find a check-cashing place that will cash personal or business checks- they all seem to exist just to cash entitlement checks and such. Man, I wish I could find one like you use, as I hate having a bank account- even though I only keep a token amount in it.

I needed some change a few months ago in Ventura County, California, to pay my children’s history teacher (the historian of Ventura County–an awesome truth-telling teacher) and the teller at the credit union would not give me change for a $20 bill, because I did not have an account there.

I have had to get testy with my bank – where I have had my personal and business accounts for 20-plus years. The sour old frau has not only demanded I present ID, but demands to physically handle it and notes my info. I got loud. A teller who knows me stepped in, told the frau to ease off. But these people think they own your money – and in a way, they do.

Before I became an anarchist; I have been tempted for decades to initiate a petition to create an equal privacy law for people to vote on. The law would balance our loss of privacy by mandating that politicians, LEO’s, prosecuting attorney’s, and judges face the same scrutiny and loss of privacy that the general public does. If truck drivers and certain other people are subjected to so-called random drug tests; then government officials likewise should be subjected to the same so-called random tests. The same thing goes for sobriety check points: We citizens should have the right to stop LEO’s and other government officials to determine that they are sober, and to check their papers while we are at it. We citizens should also be able to view the security cameras installed in every hallway in government office and meetings buildings. We also should be able to access the license plate trackers in order to keep track where they are traveling to.
I never carried out that plan because in the early years I doubted that very many people would have supported the idea. Nowadays I think such a petition would have strong support, but I lack the time to carry out this idea. I invite others to steal my idea. :0). Make sure you get as heavy local media coverage as you can, because more people will then be aware of that petition when the politicians and judges shoot it down, which will give you even greater support.

Man, I barely recognize this as the country in which I grew up. Almost daily I wonder if I’ve slipped into some Philip K Dick / Twilight Zone alternate world. Just makes me sad.

This morning I got an email from my auto insurance mafioso suggesting I could lower my motorcycle rates by using an app on my phone to track my riding (it wouldn’t. It’d almost certainly raise them.) 😉

After recoiling in horror and deleting that effrontery I found myself wondering how many people would eagerly put that electronic tracker on themselves, and that thought makes me almost physically ill. I’d like to think bikers are a different enough breed that most will scoff at the idea, but I dunno…

I gamed their system a few years ago with this car tracking crap. My work van was on the verge of being retired from active service, so I connected a tracker to it. If I remember correctly it was for three or six months. Once every week or so I’d start it and drive it to a nearby friend’s house for a visit and then drive it home, where it’d sit until next time. Meanwhile I used another vehicle to do the things I’d normally do with my van. At the end of the surveillance period I returned their spy device, resumed using the van normally (pretty much daily), and got close to $300 off my insurance!

In last week’s Supreme Court ruling on Carpenter V. U.S. Chief Justice Roberts wrote, in the majority opinion: “When the government tracks the location of a cellphone,” the chief justice wrote, “it achieves near perfect surveillance, as if it had attached an ankle monitor to the phone’s user.”

And people line up for the latest i-phone or brag about their android and all its cool features.

People are willingly putting their necks in a noose because it’s made with velvet rope.

I’ve read apocryphal stories that “the elite” regard the mass of humanity as dumb animals, beneath contempt. They feel no guilt exploiting them for the same reason that most people feel no guilt eating a hamburger.

The longer I live, the more I incline toward the view that “the elites” may be right.

Even so, I will still not eat the “hamburger” on two legs, even though I probably could. It is sometimes a real gimp to have a conscience.

“Our friends are sanguine that a great change for the better has been wrought and is progressive.5 I suppose good has been done— that the Federalists have been reconciled and cemented—have been awakened and alarmed. Perhaps too there may be some sensible and moderate men of the adverse party who are beginning to doubt. But I as yet discover no satisfactory symptoms of a revolution of opinion in the mass “informe in gens cui lumen ademptum.”6 Nor do I look with much expectation to any serious alteration until inconveniences are extensively felt or until time has produced a disposition to coquet it with new lovers. Vibrations of power, you are aware, are of the genius of our Government.
6. Hamilton is quoting from Vergil’s Aeneid, Third Book, line 659. The entire quotation reads: “Monstrum horrendum informe ingens cui lumen ademptum,” which can be translated “a dreadful monster, shapeless, huge, blind.” It is part of a description of the Cyclops Polyphemus after Ulysses had put out its eye.
Although Henry Adams states that Hamilton on one occasion at a New York dinner said: “Your people, sir,—your people is a great beast” (History of the United States of America During the First Administration of Thomas Jefferson [New York, 1889], I, 85), he does not give any source, and no such quotation has been found in H’s surviving papers. The closest H came to such sentiments in his extant writings is the quotation from the Aeneid in the letter to Rufus King printed above.”

“Jay Gould…boasted he could hire one half of the working class to kill the other half….People like Rhode Island senator Nelson Aldrich, Rockefeller’s factotum in the upper chamber, made no attempt to conceal his loathing of the mob, a bestial “horde,” a “swarm,” motivated solely by grievance & animal passion.”

~ Every Man A Speculator, A History of Wall Street in American Life

The mass of humanity is *dishonest* animals. And dishonesty *is* dumb. But that applies just as much to the mass known as “elites,” – which the lower mass floats up. Uber-unter & it’s borg-matrix sado-masochistic symbiosis, is contemptible. But for at skimpy margins, it is also human condition everywhere\when.

I remember when that book came out. Someone had quote Clyde’s observation in the book that Hillary Clinton is a museum specimen example of a yankee.

A few weeks back, I was explaining to a few here that yankee is an ideology, rather than a general term for people born north of the Mason-Dixon line.

Wilson tells of how the yankee was originally a descendant of the puritans who came here because they were so widely despised in England that life was uncomfortable for them.

Every despicable trend that has taken root here; socialism, mercantilism, public schooling, etc. was originated by yankees and today their ideological descendants try their best to keep those trends alive. Both of the “two parties” are controlled at the top by yankees, and nobody else has a home in those parties.

Have you been following the Theranos scandal? That woman is almost too perfectly the archetypical high-echelon sociopath. It’s too bad (for her) she went into “business.” She would have made a great president…

Unfortunately the law works both ways. On the one hand, as we’ve seen many times here, there is no expectation of privacy when in a public place, even if you’re in costume. So feel free to record video of anyone on the sidewalk. But Uncle is using that same court ruling to do the same thing. And without specific legislation it will continue to dragnet up all the comings and goings of everyone in public. And now good luck getting any legislator to introduce a bill to limit Uncle’s cameras. The whole debate will be stopped when any legislator mentions this incident.

For sure it doesn’t pass the sniff test, especially when you consider that mere citizens cannot use video cameras as evidence to lock up someone else. But until we start seeing more congressmen and senators caught on camera things won’t change.

Here, here. 9 suuupreme coat “constructionist” and ‘liiiiiiberal” justices decided that you don’t have any expectation of privacy. If there was no expectation of privacy, how come people tint their windows or pick their nose in the car? People don’t always expect others to be monitoring them 24/7. That’s why there hasn’t been any significant resistance to this covert hostile action on the part of the statists.

Didn’t say I agreed, just that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. I’m all in favor of crowd sourced surveillance of the police. With cheap cameras it should be doable. Add some smart software that can find police vehicles and costumes and put it all up online.

We’re on the same page. I just burns me to no end that the supreme coat and the swine “represenatatives” see fit to make presumptions and assumptions about what they demand in the guise of “expectations.”

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Eric started out writing about cars for mainstream media outlets such as The Washington Times, Detroit News and Free Press, Investors Business Daily, The American Spectator, National Review, The Chicago Tribune and Wall Street Journal.